The medicine-men of the Apache are most influential personages. They are usually men of more than ordinary ability, claiming, through their many deities and their knowledge of the occult and ominous, to have supernatural power. In sickness any individual may make supplication to the deities, but the prayers of the medicine-men are accepted as being most efficacious.
Apache Medicine-man
From Copyright Photograph 1907 by E.S. Curtis
Many of the medicine-men have some knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants and generally make use of them in the treatment of disease, but their treatment consists more of incantation than aught else. Even in collecting the plants they invoke the deities, usually facing the cardinal points in turn. In case the prescription calls for a combination of herbs or other vegetal products, the number four is always strictly adhered to; it might be a decoction made of four roots of one variety or of a single root from each of four varieties of plants.
Every Apache medicine-man has a medicine skin, his ĕpú̆n ezchí, inscribed with the symbolism of the tribal mythology. With his prayer wands he rehearses the symbolic figures, praying to the mythical characters who are regarded as most efficacious in the particular ailment under treatment. In his own little kówa, or dwelling, with the painted deerskin spread before him, on which are delineated the symbolic representations of a score of gods comprising the Apache pantheon, a medicine-man will sit and croon songs and pray all day and all night in the hope of hearing the voices of celestial messengers.
Many of the prayers and songs of the Apache medicine-men are very beautiful. The following is an example:
1 Stĕná pĕhí̆nda nzhóni, tógonĭl ádahĕ bé̆oĭshkan.
2 Inaté̆sh nzhóni bé̆oĭshkan.
3 Ĕnŭdé̆tsos nzhóni bé̆oĭshkan.